The invention relates to telecommunications networks, and in particular to the provision of an interface for network management using an environment such as the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) environment.
The TMN environment provides an industry standard Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP) and supports X710/ISO 9595 Common Management Information Services (CMIS) under that protocol. These services allow manipulation of a large number and variety of objects over a network in accordance with a relatively limited set of commands, including operations such as GET, SET, ACTION, CREATE and DELETE.
The configuration of the network can take many different forms, including, for example, a public switched telephone network and/or a local area network and/or a dedicated network connecting computer and other equipment within a local area and/or over a wider area. The objects can relate to definitions of a piece of equipment, a component of that equipment, an operation of the equipment or a component thereof, and so on.
In the TMN environment, objects are defined in accordance with the industry standard X722/ISO-10165-4 Guidelines for Definition of Managed Objects (GDMO). The GDMO defines data, or parameter, types in accordance with the X208/ISO-8824 Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN. 1) and the X209/ISO-8825 Specification of Basic Encoding Rules for Abstract Notation One (BER) for data notation. These various industry standards are defined by the International Standards Organisation (ISO).
In order to invoke the CMJS, it is necessary to provide an Application Programming Interface (API). Typically, APIs have been created using programming languages such as C or C++. However, a program-based API for the ASN.1 and GDMO standards runs into difficulties when there is a need to expand the network services, for example by defining new types and instances of objects (e.g., a new type of workstation for a network manager). In other words, the conventional approach to providing an API is problematic in a dynamic network management environment.
An aim of the present invention, is therefore to mitigate the problems of the prior art.